I decided to make an Orion engineer and went with cruisers since they're the best for defense. I'm already up to level 47, but I'm not sure if I should keep going with torpedoes. Since cruisers work best by using both fore and aft weapons at once, I'm thinking of just putting 8 Beam Arrays (Tetryon for the time being, AP to come later), boosting some power into weapons, and just let them eat away at shields. I seem to do well enough for PVE (which is all I care about.)

I'm not trying to for top DPS, but I'm not sure if having a torpedo on my ship really helps make for a nice little spike in damage on the few times that my ship is facing the enemy. What do you suggest?

On that note, are there any good tactical skills to help boost beam attacks? I have Fire At Will 2, but not being able to choose targets can be annoying at times. I hear there's Beam Overload, which charges up the next attack. Are there any damage-boosting beam skills that act on a countdown timer like how Rapid Fire works for cannons?